The Atlantic ocean, bipolar and moody, teeters on the spectrum between gracious host and sloppy drunk, prone to lashing out in anger when she’s not clearing your passage nicely before you. But when you’re navigating the expanse, who are you going to meet, alone and aloft on her waves? It’s never clear.

That’s why Bermuda’s random location is like a rock climbers jug (A jug—coming from the sport of rock climbing — comes from the term “jug-handle”. This simply means a great big hand hold you might encounter on your way up a rock face. It’s something you could do pullups on if you wanted, and is so gratefully received when you get it.)

Likewise, for sailors this Earth poked its nose just barely above the waves, 8,000 meters over the sea floor, somewhere in the vastness of the 106 million square kilometers of sloppy, moody, temperamental Atlantic ocean. Finding this one spit was the grateful jug, the hand hold that could just give you a minute to breathe.

And I guess it was just inevitable that some Spanish Galleon heading hopeful to the new world would bump into the peak of this oceanic mountain en route between continents. For Amari, I’m so glad they did so we could follow suit and hop on this lily pad before the longer oceanic jump we soon faced.

But you can’t separate this unique island’s place on the map from it’s place in history. They are a tight weave, and exactly as weirdly complicated as you would expect from the opportunistic sailors, slavers, traders, marauders, scallywags, and ne’er-do-wells who found this handhold, and decided to stay.

We got a glimpse of this history through the dancers who came in to perform for us. And yes, I know it’s a reproduction of a facsimile of long ago handed down by ghosts of their past. But like that jug, they hold on to their history with white knuckles. This is not just what they’re doing for us on one random afternoon in May, it’s threaded into the quilt of their souls.

So when you watch this, move past the Epcot worthy staged performance provided for the slosh of gawking tourists passing through, and see this as a thin line leading back to the history forced on them, and the future they made out of that.

About That Rum

A surprisingly good part of our time together was when the guy from Goslings rum distillery came over to our little meeting hall to push his product on this captive cluster of sailors. Talk about an easy sale!

That said, he totally made the best of it, taking the time to share the long history of this family-owned business, how they started, grew, smuggled, adapted, and developed their product through some seriously shady times, and how all that resulted in the current bottles before us.

The good news too was that he did have some of his normal rums that you definitely need to mix with seriously any tropical fruit juices at all, stick a bamboo umbrella on top, and call it an afternoon.

But others were higher end products that you would never mix with anything. Great stories, great product.

Retrograde Amnesia For Food?

Like so many others who crossed the Atlantic over the past 500 years, we also stayed only as long as we needed to catch our breath for a minute, refit, restock, stow an embarrassing amount of rum in our holds, and then head on Eastward.

I guess my regret is that I didn’t spend more time exploring the food side of this culture. Because I honestly have no memories of their food. And normally I’m all over WHAT they’re serving, WHY it fits into their food culture, and HOW I can do that back on Amari. But somehow I suffered retrograde amnesia and nothing notable has stuck with me as my brain banished all those memories from my otherwise overcrowded cerebral cortex.

Next time though, I resolve to spend more time, take a cooking class, and be that annoying guy holding my cell phone out to record everything that happens.

Moving On

For Amari, we waved goodbye to Grace and met our new crew and dear friends Babs and Tim. They got an immediate crash course on Amari navigation, and Tim scored some stranded fishing line for my fancy new reel. That rig served us so well for Mahi, Wahoo, and plenty of fresh tuna … thank you Tim!!

So by 5 days in we were all prepped, rummed up and ready, itching to head eastward for two long weeks over to the Azores. So the day came, our ARC Rally organizers lined us all up in the bay, counted down, blew a kazoo into the microphone, and we were off.

So goodbye Bermuda, thank you for the breather, for the grateful handhold you provided to us, and to the scores of sailors before me. I’m actually looking forward to the next time, to get to know you better.